Ernest Gaines awarded National Medal of Arts

The guy in the picture with me is Edward “Ned” Spring. He was a very good friend of both Gus Blaisdell and me. We were at Stanford together back in the late 50s. We used to listen to a lot of Jazz together, drink wine and discuss literature. Ned use to write liner notes for 33 rpm dust jackets. He could be extremely funny…He died young. I think Gus was at his bed side when he died, Gus called to tell me he had gone to the big PAD in the sky. He left a wife and two children. Gus and I were at the memorial. It was very quiet. Betty, Ned’s wife, wanted it that way. Just a few close friends. I think that was the only time I was ever seen to cry. Ned was quite thin, and Gus always called him The Snake. He called me Prez, because I wore a hat like the one Lester Young, the great jazz musician, wore. Gus was good at giving people different names. “Hey, Prez, the snake has left us ” We had been out drinking at the No Name Bar in Sausalita only a couple of weeks before he died–Me, Gus and Ned…..Ernie>

I am Ernie’s step-daughter (when he was with Linda Lawrence), and I remember Ned and Gus and that whole cast of characters.
My mom and I were actually with Gus and Ernie at Ned’s funeral. It was at the Zen Center in SF, and though it was quiet, there were other folks there. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old. I used to play with Ned & Betty’s kids, and would spend the night over there after Ned passed away.
I always thought that Fran Ortiz took the pic of Ernie in the paisley Viyella shirt (which my mom had bought for him as a gift). They really all wonderful photos, and I remember Ned and Gus very fondly.
Just thought I’d pass that along 🙂

Roz,
Great to hear from you. Thanks for the added information. That paisley shirt on Ernie looks great. As far as the photo credits go, I emailed with Ernie and Marcia Gaudet. She was director of the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at the time. She wrote, ” The one with the beret and cigarette is the author’s photo for the First Edition of Bloodline (1968). The photographer is Edward Spring! ” But when I Iook at the shots more closely I believe the paisley shirt shot is later than ’68. It looks different than the Bloodline author photo in many ways. So you may very well be right.

I think it was Beulah Korty (John Korty’s wife) who photographed Ernie in the paisley shirt and beret – when Miss Jane Pittman was being filmed as a television movie, mid ’70’s. The top photo came later. It could be Fran Ortiz’s photo (the top one) but my hunch it was a photo that accompanied a story about Ernie at some point, in the early ’80’s.